I Remember Me
by Third Person Point of View
Summary: ONESHOT: Shepard's experience while completing the "I Remember Me" side mission in ME1.


"It hurts when she remembers – when _I_ remember… me."

Shepard could hear the drugs in the thick slowness of her voice. With this final sentence, Talitha's eyes fluttered and her body collapsed. Shepard lunged forward to catch the girl and sunk to the floor with her under the girl's dead weight, scant though it was. She could feel the sharp bones of her spine beneath the frail, thin cloth of Talitha's shirt. She didn't have to call out for assistance. Before she could open her mouth, Garrus was at her side, taking the unconscious, damaged girl in his arms.

Shepard took in a deep breath, resting her hands on her knees for a moment before glancing up. Speaking with Talitha about the slaver raid had been difficult, but the urgency of duty had edged away any personal feelings Shepard might have had in the moment. The immediate task of preventing the girl from doing herself any harm was at the forefront of her mind. But it was the sight of Garrus walking away with Talitha draped in his arms that hit her like a ton of bricks. The limp arm dangling under Garrus's shoulder brought back a slew of images, sounds, and smells and Shepard closed her eyes tightly against them.

"Commander?" Kaidan's deep, raspy voice came at her elbow. "Are you all right?"

Shepard shook the images from her brain and turned to look at him crouched beside her. She gave a small shrug. "It's just hard looking what I could have become in the eyes. I wish there was more I could do for her."

"You did more than anyone else could have," Kaidan replied, placing a gentle hand on her elbow. He helped her to her feet and gave a small squeeze at her arm before letting go. "You stopped her from making a terrible mistake. You gave her hope. I think she needed that more than anything else in the world right now."

"Thanks, Kaidan."

Shepard glanced back over and saw Garrus handing the girl over to the paramedics that C-Sec had called in. Garrus turned back to look at her and caught her eye. An intense wave of exhaustion swept over Shepard suddenly and her temples began to pound. She motioned to Garrus that the team was to return to the ship and headed for the Normandy's airlock.

"Shepard?"

She turned back at the sound of worry that tainted Kaidan's tone. "Yeah?"

"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked, his deep brown eyes brimming with concern.

"I will be." When he didn't seem too relieved, she gave a small smile. "I promise."

After the three of them went through the decontamination process and had shed all their equipment in their lockers, Shepard headed straight for her personal quarters. The cabin may not have been luxurious, but it did have its own private bathroom, which was more than she had ever been used to. She stripped and turned the shower as hot as it would go. As the tiny compartment filled with steam, she stepped under the cascade of water and let out a sigh as heat flowed over her neck and shoulders and all the way down her spine.

The way that Garrus had held the poor girl, the image of a turian soldier carrying a limp body, was still seared into her brain. She felt an old heaviness in her heart and she knew that there was no use in shying away from it. She had told Talitha that she needed to face her past, even though it was difficult and ugly. How could she not hold to the same principle? With a deep breath, hot steam filling her lungs, she let the images crash over her.

_There were screams in the air, some frantic, some pained, others desperately afraid, still others defiant. Her father was gripping her hand so tightly it hurt. Suddenly he was pushing her into a jammed storage shed. The door was malfunctioning, but he pulled it open enough to push her inside._

"_Jane, you stay in here and don't come out no matter what happens. We will try to find you," her father said. Behind him her mother was crying._

"_No, Dad, we can't separate," she insisted, keeping a hold of his hand, tears forming in her eyes. Fear pounded forcefully in her ears, wrapping around her throat and making speech difficult. "We can all fit in here, we'll make room!"_

_There was a loud explosion nearby as a shuttle went up in flames. The firelight burned brightly in her eyes._

"_Listen to me, don't make any noise. You'll be safe in here, I promise," her father said._

"_No, wait-"_

_Her mother stepped forward and took her face in her hands. She brought shaking lips to Shepard's forehead in a goodbye kiss. Her mother's face was covered in terrified tears. She had never looked braver._

"_Not a sound, baby," she whispered, another tear slipping past her lashes._

"_Mom, Dad, you can't-" Shepard pleaded frantically._

"_We love you," her father said, squeezing her hand one last time._

_Then, he pushed her back from the door roughly and she landed haphazardly on a pile of crates. Shepard struggled to get back on her feet, but before she could get to the door, her father bashed the control panel to pieces with a metal pipe and the door gave a sharp, electronic squeal before it slammed shut._

"_NO! NO!" Shepard screamed and launched at the door._

_The door had malfunctioned and there was a tiny gap and though it was jammed tightly, she could peer outside by pressing one eye to the crack. She wanted to scream and pound, but she knew that she would be dishonoring her parents' sacrifice if she did. She pressed against the door and stared out, unable to look away._

_Her parents were running for cover across the street, but it was too late. A batarian slaver rounded the corner with his pistol drawn. He barked at them to get down on the floor. Her father, instead of buckling to his demands, defiantly threw the metal pipe in his hand full force at the slaver's head. By mere luck, the batarian was able to dodge it. In a rage, he fired three times, catching her father full in the chest. Without so much as a whimper, he crumpled to the floor in a bloody heap._

"_NO!" came her mother's desolate cry and she flung herself viciously at the slaver with nothing but her rage to damage him._

_The pistol went off twice more and she fell in her tracks, her limbs askew on the pavement. Shepard pulled her hands up to cover her mouth, her tears leaving marked tracks down her cheeks, as she stepped back from the door. Her foot accidently nudged one of the crates and the wares balanced on top of it fell with a crash. From the crack in the door, she saw the batarian turn towards the sound._

_Part of her screamed with terror. The other more reckless, furious side willed him to find her so that she could tear him apart with her bare hands and feed the rage welling in her heart. She stood motionless, torn at the seams, the sight of her parents' lifeless bodies engraved in her mind. The batarian made it to the door and poked two of his eyes through the crack. He caught sight of her silhouette._

"_Get out here!" he raged and started trying to pry the door open._

_Shepard stood, unable to move as the door rattled and buckled. He tried wedging the tip of his pistol through the crack in the door to gain some leverage when shots rang out and he grunted, slamming into the door. The batarian's body slumped to the floor and Shepard saw a turian soldier come over to check that the slaver was truly dead._

_From behind the soldier a poly-symphonic voice called out, "Clear!"_

"_Clear!" the soldier near her called back. He pushed the dead slaver out of the way of the door. "Is there anyone inside?"_

_It took Shepard a moment to break the silence she had promised her parents she would keep. "Yes."_

"_We are going to get you out of there, there is no reason to worry. How many of you are there?"_

"_Just me." The words hitched in her throat and burned painfully._

_After wrestling with the door, the turian was finally able to wedge the doors apart and he held out a hand to her. Shepard took it and stepped over the corpse of her parents' murderer. The sheer horror of everything that had just happened hit her in that instant and she threw herself against the turian. The soldier was surprised, but he wrapped an arm around her comfortingly._

"_You're all right now," he said in a deep voice. A voice that had obviously seen many atrocities before. "We're going to keep you safe."_

_He kept a tight arm around her while he called in an evac shuttle. From just under his arm Shepard caught the sight of one of the turian's fellow soldiers carrying her mother's body away. Shepard could see her limp hand poking out from under the turian's arm, blood dripping down her wedding ring and off her finger, leaving a trail behind them._

"_Do you know where your parents are?" the soldier asked her, walking her towards the landing shuttle._

_Shepard nodded._

"_Where?"_

_She pointed at another turian, holding her father's body this time._

"_Dead," she responded and broke down into sobs that racked her body and mind with excruciating pain._

Shepard grabbed the towel again as she finished dressing and methodically dried the tips of her long hair. She didn't feel she had the energy to put it up into her regular bun, her arms heavy and tired. Instead, she dropped the towel where she was and slumped at the foot of her bed, looking at her shoes. She knew she would never be able to get over what had happened on Mindoir that day, but it still surprised her how painfully clear her memory of it was. She felt the tears dripping from her eyes and made no effort to stop them. If tears were what her body demanded at the moment, tears were what she would allow.

There was a knock at her cabin door, but she didn't have a chance to respond to it before Garrus appeared in her doorway. He saw her tears and said nothing about them, instead came and sat beside her on the bed. There was silence between them for a very long time. That had always been something she had liked about her friendship with Garrus: how comfortable a silence with him could be. They had revealed their demons one to the other. There was no shame between them, no judgment, no need for justification.

"It was a turian ship that picked up the distress call," Shepard explained as if they had been conversing the whole time. "They were the first on the scene. The way you carried Talitha… a turian soldier held my mother's body the same way."

"I'm sorry, Shepard," Garrus said and his tone was not one of pity, but of understanding. "It's amazing what can trigger these things."

Shepard nodded. Another long silence stretched before Garrus put a consoling arm around her. Shepard took in a deep breath and another tear fell from her eye. It was the last one that night. She had relived what she had needed to. Shepard had reconciled her past long ago, but the death of her parents would always hurt. It would always burn in a hole in her heart having watched them die. Moving on from it for her meant that she knew she would think of it sometimes and lose herself in the sorrow of the memory, but that she did not have to shy away from it or think on it constantly. The tears she shed honored her parents' lives, but the fact that they eventually stopped made their sacrifice worthwhile.


End file.
